Seriously, no offense to this guy:
putowtin said:
M-98 Widow
upgraded to 10, both of these are amazingly deadly!
But if you're still using the standard Widow you need to get with the times. Yes, the Widow has enough stopping power that it could be mounted on the Normandy as a primary weapon system, but it's just sooooo slow and inefficient...at least when you compare it to the updated version: the Black Widow.
Fact: The standard Widow has the most damage of any sniper rifle. But the damage bar only goes up so far and as such there's not much room for improvement in the damage area.
The Black Widow, on the other hand, starts out as powerful as the Mantis which is itself a ridiculously great sniper rifle thanks to it's stopping power. Fully upgraded, I think the Black Widow is about 3/4ths as strong as the Widow. Where it makes up for this loss of power is in its efficiency. 3 shots before a reload as compared to 1.
Now, the Black Widow is easily capable of one-shotting any standard enemy (cerberus troopers, any type of husk, any type of geth, etc.) So that means the only real way to compare stopping power is with the heavy units (brutes, atlas, banshee, geth prime, etc). Those 3 shots EASILY pack much more punch than a single shot from the Widow, allowing you to take down bigger enemies quicker. Then there's the fact that it has a higher spare ammo compacity than the standard Widow so you never have to worry about running out of ammo.
All in all, when something absolutely undeniably needs to be dead, look no further than the Black Widow.